I was very excited leading up to this past Memorial Day weekend in anticipation of all the grilling and smoking I’d be able to do, and in particular, the smoking. I’d done a good amount of grilling already this year, but I hadn’t smoked much meat, doing only a mackerel so far. It was good, but it wasn’t pork. You know how it is. To quote the great Thomas Keller in his Introduction to the book “Charcuterie,” he says:
From a culinary standpoint, the pig is unmatched in the diversity of flavors and textures it offers the cook and the uses it can be put to-from head to tail, from ham to tenderloin, it’s a marvel. A piece of pork belly can be brined, roasted, grilled, sauteed, dry-cured, braised, or confited, with widely varying results. This is a very hopeful time for the pig in America.
Knowing though that I’d not be able to do wall-to-wall pork the whole weekend, I chose each of the major food groups for the bases of the evening meals over the three days: pork, beef and chicken. Steaks would be grilled Saturday, Ribs smoked Sunday, and 2 Chickens smoked on Monday. As I mentioned, I was stoked (pun completely intended). And, as a huge added bonus, my wife decided that she was going to make home made marshmallows. Let’s start with the steaks on Saturday.
We had 1.5” thick ribeyes, and that was a very good thing. Here’s the steaks before they went on the grill:
With meat as good as that, the only seasoning I used was salt and pepper, kosher salt at that, and more than you’d think you’d need (makes for a nicer crust), and let it sit for an hour to get up to room temperature before going on the grill. Then, we realized we were running late, and had to get the steaks on the grill before the coals had had time to mellow, and as a result, there was a bit more char on the beefy goodness than I would have liked. Here’s what the steaks looked like coming off the grill:
Now, it’s really hard to screw up a steak that good, and so even the char didn’t really hinder the overall experience, especially in the context of the rest of the meal, which included:
- Grilled garlicky portabello mushrooms
- Grilled asparagus
- Garlic confit mashed potatoes
- Many Beers
- The aforementioned homemade marshmallows
which looked like this:
The marshmallows, I learned, are basically a combination of cooked sugar, water and corn syrup whipped together with gelatin until you get a pearly white goop that you spread out on to a pan and wait for it to cool before cutting and dredging in powdered sugar to combat the tackiness. We roasted the marshmallows over the grill, and hot damn.
I can never eat store bought marshmallows again; they’re that good. So, overall Saturday was a success, but I was still looking forward to smoke some pork.
Which I did the next day. I had 3 racks of baby back pork ribs, and initially seasoned them with salt, let them sit for a while, and then put a rub on them. Here’s what the ribs were up to pre-rub.
Now, I hope you understand that I’m not at liberty to tell you the full ingredients for my rib rub, but I will tell you there was paprika in it. Probably some pepper too. The rest is up to you. This time, I decided to leave the membrane on the back of the ribs, to see how it would work out. I had the smoker going at 225, using hickory chips and charcoal, and smoked them for 5 hours, spraying them with apple juice every 30 minutes or so. Here they are after coming out of the smoker:
For me at least, and I may be a bit strange in regards to how affected I am by really good food, what a visceral response food elicits for me, moments such as eating these ribs caused the thankfully familiar reflex of closing my eyes, taking a deep breath, and grabbing on to the side of the table for dear life. I’m not saying they were the best ribs that have ever been prepared or anything, but damn. If I recall correctly, there was also some other food that evening, which included:
- Grilled Corn
- Collard Greens
- Apple Sauce
- Still More Beers
- and a few more marshmallows
Sunday was holy.
Now, onto Monday, when we smoke the chickens. As anyone who has ever cooked chicken before knows, chicken tends to dry out when cooked, regardless of the cooking method, and so to combat that, we brine the chickens. We brine the chickens by dissolving a cup of salt and a quarter cup of molasses into water, let it cool down (you don’t want to start cooking the chicken in hot brine), transfer it to a container the can hold the meat and enough liquid to cover it, put in the chicken(s), add more water as necessary, and then let it hang out for between 6 and 10 hours. Next was adding a rub to the chickens, after which point they looked like this:
For the chickens, I used the same configuration on the smoker as I did with the ribs: 225 degrees, hickory chips and charcoal, and had them on for 4 hours (ensuring they reached an internal temperature of 165 using a meat thermometer), and then took them out. They looked good, and like this:
Now, I’ve smoked a good number of chickens in my day, so I had a good idea of what to expect, and they delivered. Smoky, juicy, spicy, the whole thing. They were no ribs, but then again, nothing is. The rest of the meal on Monday consisted of:
- Potato salad with lots of bacon
- Broccoli
- Beers til there were no more beers
Overall, this was by far the best Memorial Day weekend I’ve ever had, food-wise or otherwise. If yours was half as good as mine, you’re doing pretty damn good.
